Final Nielsen Ratings From Recent Sports Telecasts

The charts below lists final Nielsen ratings from recent sports telecasts (THE DAILY).

WORTHY OF THE GOLD: TSN drew 5.3 million viewers for Tuesday's U.S.-Canada IIHF World Junior Championship Gold Medal Game, marking the largest audience ever for the net and the largest audience on Canadian television since '05. Eight of the top 10 programs of all time on TSN have been IIHF World Junior Championship games. TSN.ca also earned 145,000 live streams for the Gold Medal Game, a record for primetime online streaming (TSN). In Toronto, Chris Zelkovich awarded TSN an "A" for its broadcast of the game, as the net "did it right." Zelkovich: "It didn't overwhelm us with heart-breaking stories, images of crazed fans or multiple replays. Instead, it gave us the game with the right mix of angles and stories." Zelkovich also noted TSN drew 3.223 million viewers for its coverage of the January 3 Canada-Switzerland World Junior Championship semifinal, the largest audience for a Canadian broadcast last weekend (THESTAR.com, 1/6).

RINGING IN THE NEW YEAR: Boston's WHDH-NBC earned a 14.4 local rating for the January 1 Flyers-Bruins Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic, a "massive number by any measure, but particularly for a hockey game." By comparison, NESN earned a 14.2 in the market for Hurricanes-Bruins Eastern Conference Quarterfinal Game Seven last year, which "remains the network's highest rating for a Bruins game in its 25-year history" (BOSTON GLOBE, 1/8).

NOTES: The 13 Rams games that were televised in the St. Louis market this season averaged a 16.2 local rating. That rating is slightly down from a 16.3 rating last season, but "still above the low point of the team's 15 seasons in St. Louis, a 15.8 mark" in '98. Three Rams games were blacked out locally (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 1/8)....Louisville's WLKY-CBS earned a 37.0 local overnight rating and 248,000 HHs for the January 2 Louisville-Kentucky men's basketball game (BIZJOURNALS.com, 1/6)....ESPN earned a 1.1 cable rating for the January 2 Under Armour All-America High School Football Game, up 10% from a 1.0 rating for last year's game (ESPN).